I know, this is simply not done, to post without a pic, but take it or leave it!

End of year craziness has hit--wrapping up work, juggling child care needs (Marie has finals and needed some time off), preparing for our trip to France (next Monday!), dealing with our poor sick cat, Two (he has just been diagnosed with the same kidney disease as his sister, One, who we lost in February), helping our friends Carolina&Ted with some small needs around the birth of their adorably cute (and so small, I've already forgotten how small Ruby was on day four) Emilio, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth.

Hence no time for pics.

But suffice it to know that Ruby is doing all that one would wish and can expect for an almost 15-month old. She has a constantly runny nose, but it doesn't seem to bother her in the slightest. She is soooo busy these days, and doesn't need much encouragement or involvement from us. She is taking stuff out of stuff and putting into some other stuff (one scenario involves pulling wads of clean diapers off the shelf, putting them in her stroller and pushing them around the house, taking them back to her room and stuffing them into the diaper bucket--the used diaper bucket--and then taking them out of that and putting them into her sock drawer, then taking socks and putting them into her shirt drawer and taking shirts and putting them in her stroller, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth). She is constantly asking for apples (make fist and twist it close to your cheek) or cheese (get cheese, take a bite, put cheese on floor so you can sign us cheese, which involves rubbing palms of your hands against one another, while saying "cheeeese"), or telling us that something is cold (put both fists in front of you, shake them and go "argh" like you're exerting some major effort) or "hotschaud" (only word she does in both languages!).

So, you can see that Ruby is too busy to take pics also. Or we can't catch her sitting down long enough to actually snap a shot. We might if we kept the camera in the bathroom, because she loves to carefully back up to the footstool and sit on it.

But, we will be in France on December 25th and will start taking pics again for your enjoyment. Maybe we will even manage some this weekend, in between all this amazingly fun and spirited "I feel so lucky to have such an beautiful family" craziness. Happy holidays everyone.